Wade, you know – THE Maine Ten, likes to go down in his basement, pour himself a nice hot mug of cocoa and indulge in his secret shame:

Despite the fact that I’m about to graduate with my BA in English and enter into a grad program (again, in English), I occasionally go on Yahoo! Answers and spend hours at a time reading and becoming personally invested in the horrible poetry and general questions being asked by the adolescent and the elderly. These are people who can’t operate Google. And I spend valuable time in my life explaining to them (in oh-so gentle terms) how to maybe make their junk poems about their boyfriends (“your black soul stabs my heart / how could we ever be torn apart?” sort of stuff) a little less horrifying.

The sad evidence: I have 1,002 points as a Yahoo answerer, level 3. I’ve answered 160 questions, 47 of which were the “best answer.” I don’t think I get off on being pedantic, but these stats seem to indicate otherwise. Here’s perhaps the worst part of it all: There are people on that website who answer thousands of questions or tens of thousands. So it’s not like I’m even at the top of my game or anything. I’m just a terrifically average knowledge-imparter even on the painfully ignorant and slow-witted web-community that is Yahoo Answers.

I think this is kind of sweet, actually. Wade, you are doing the internet equivalent of volunteering in a homeless shelter. You wash the feet of the lame and ignorant, and for that I salute you.

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